Wednesday, November 7, 2012

L5R Second City Boxed Set: Samurai of the Wild Frontier

CITIES OF SPICE AND IVORY
I love city sourcebooks and, after some prodding by the notable Australian Crab
Clan leader, Hida Mann, I have come to love the fourth edition of Legend of
the Five Rings. So something like the Second City boxed set should
be right up my alley- combining the best of both worlds. In it, AEG have
produced a massive and sprawling product. I would have held off buying this for
myself, but the generosity of the players in my G+ Supers campaign put it in my
hands. Is it a perfect strike for L5R?

L5R 4e has taken an approach I applaud, aiming to be more “era neutral.”
There’s so much history available to play in that attempting to keep up with
the “meta-story” generated by the CCG meant a desperate race and supplements
which weren’t useful to players working with earlier time periods. I’ll admit
that made me skip L5R Third Edition until I started seeing used copies at my
FLGS a couple of years ago. The recent Imperial Histories
book really exemplifies that approach, covering all of the metaplot/arc so far
and a few alternate eras never before described. It means that players can
easily use the setting and materials from previous editions. It is fifteen
years since the game first came out and I’m still in the time before the Clan
Wars.

That being said, there’s a bold statement right at the start of the first Second
City book, “The City will be most difficult to adapt to campaigns that do
not follow the canon storyline of the Legend of the Five Rings…(Still,) there
are many things in this book that can be mined for use in different campaigns,
even in campaigns that have nothing to do with this sort of setting.” This set-up
takes a bold risk. The Second City is major settlement for Rokugan’s
colonization of the now-empty Ivory Kingdoms, an ancient-India analogue filled
with mystery, jungles, and foreign-ness. I’ll confess to being more than a
little thrown when I read the set up- I honestly had no idea about recent
history of the CCG or the canon timeline- with everything leading up to The
Destroyer War and the fallout from that. The book does a good job of setting
that up, but hit more than a few s’wha? and really? moments as I
read along.

That’s a risky set up- a campaign frame that many GMs might not want or be able
to buy into. It is also a framework that puts aside or downplays many of the
most essential elements of the L5R setting. Instead of presenting a more conventional
city sourcebook- like a reworking of City of Lies or an
examination of the new Imperial Capitol- Second City doesn’t fit within
Rokugan. It tears the players away from the conventional structures and power
balances. It does split the difference- as this is really a sourcebook about
that city, rather than being about the wider colony it represents (though it
stops off there).

It isn’t all about the new setting, though. There’s a split in this boxed set
between the campaign materials for The Second City (three books plus a map) and
what could best be described as a GM’s Pack. All of this comes in a large and
incredibly sturdy box. This is a long way from the screwy boxes of old L5R. I
had a couple City of Lies boxes crack apart. On the other hand, the
boxes for Tomb
of Iuchiban and Otosan Uchi were
supremely solid- but also too small for their contents. The Otosan box
in particular had everything jammed in and bent. This box, though, is a keeper-
solid and sturdy like the best board game containers. There’s an insert for
holding the cards and dice in place, but you’ll want to toss that as it is
pretty useless.

GM’S MATERIAL*Dice: The box set comes with a set of ten emerald-ish d10’s with
the Imperial Chrysanthemum in the place of the 10. On the one hand, I’m pleased
to see these kind of dice. It suggests they might eventually do mon dice for
each of the clans. On the other hand the dice seem more than a little chintzy,
a lighter plastic than I care for. They’re certainly not to the same standard
as Chessex as far as material quality goes. There’s an accompanying small
drawstring black dice bag with the L5R logo and name glued/ironed on.

*Cards: I’m a little surprised, given L5R’s origin as a CCG, the
company hasn’t leveraged that for card support before. Second City includes
reference cards for each of the School techniques from the core rules. These
are about half illustration and half text- with the image the same across all
techniques for a school. There are also six copies each of a card for each of
the five stances. The cards are nice- glossy and of good thickness. I recall
the weird bendy paper of the old Clan War game, so I was relieved to see
these. It is a nice touch, though given that players only have a few school
techniques, it seems more like a prop than something highly useful. Perhaps for
introducing the game to new players. I like the cards, though there are a few
illustration choices that seem weak. Clearly the success of cards with
Pathfinder and 4E has inspired this development. Of course since places like
RPGNow presently offer POD cards, I wonder if AEG might make cards for the
Advanced Schools, Alternate Paths, and new Basic Paths from the other
supplements available that way. I imagine spell cards would be equally useful.

*GM Screen: I don’t run with a screen, but if I did, I would use
this one. The landscape set-up has two main panels, plus two half panels to
keep it standing. The front image is nice- busy, but not too crazy. I hated the
2E
screen for that. The interiors have the key tables: Fear Rules and
Condition Summary; Essential Mechanics (sequence, target numbers, maneuvers,
stances, void point uses); Skills and Weapons; and Gaining and Losing Honor. I
love the layout and graphic design on this- my favorite bit from the whole
thing.

*Character Sheets: There’s a pad of full-color, double-sided
character sheets. These are printed on nice stock- it takes pencil well and pen
doesn’t smear on it (I sacrificed a sheet to confirm that). There are also six
copies of the Premium Character Log. These saddle-stapled full-size booklets
have a cardstock cover with eight pages of expanded character sheet inside. The
paper’s a little glossier and I didn’t test it to see how it took writing (not
willing to sacrifice one of these for a review). These are cool but I’ve always
preferred a more compact sheet. Otherwise, as a GM there’s incentive for me not
to kill a player and waste a booklet…CAMPAIGN MATERIAL
The actual campaign materials for Second City comes in three full-color
softcover booklets and two mini-booklets. There’s also a poster map just of the
city. The books generally look good- with the same attention to layout and
design present in all of the other L5R 4e materials. The paper stock is glossy
and heavier- which in the case of softcovers like these makes for a weird
bowing to the books. They are perfect-bound, with a good cover cut for folding
open. The text design is excellent and the writing is pretty good throughout
(though more than a few instances of wordiness). The art’s generally excellent-
drawn as it is from across the L5R universe of cards and books. I can’t fault
the art itself. But many of these images have appeared in other L5R books so
there’s a good deal of recycling going on. There’s recycling between volumes of
the set itself. Some of the images I associate with particular characters and
places in L5R, so seeing them here in this context is more than a little
jarring. They’ve been repurposed and I’m not so sure about that. Most
importantly there’s not all that much art which shows the distinct locales and
backdrop of the Second City, the Ivory Kingdoms, or the new modes of dress
suggested by the text. There are some pieces- and I imagine trying to generate
more would have incurred a significant cost in money and time. But much of the
art doesn’t actually illustrate or enhance the material of the text- it seems
like cut and paste art for art’s sake- pretty, well done, but not making a real
contribution.

The City
This 98-page book lays out the background for the Second City campaign, with
its focus on that urban center. Just six pages set up the history, before we
get to chapters detailing each of the districts of the city. Each of these
chapters is about ten pages with a general set-up, relations to the other
districts, important personages, and a location guide. There’s also a detailed
map presented and annotated. These maps have some pixilation. The district
material is quite good- offering plenty of plot hooks, stories, and concepts. I
really liked several of the locations and people and can easily see borrowing
those for elsewhere.

Second City presents a very different set up than the usual samurai
city. In some ways it offers a more lax approach to the rules and restrictions-
which may appeal to those gamers who feel bound by the codes and obligations of
the conventional L5R setting and campaign. I suspect, in part, that’s the
intent of this whole setting. It certainly feels like a setting made for
players who want a more conventional pseudo-samurai game, engaging in oriental
adventures with fewer complications. However, the game doesn’t really open up
the world to exploration- there’s some discussion of that. It is a city
campaign sourcebook. Material about the Ivory Kingdoms broadly is much scarcer.
It takes up the last section of this book (pages 81-98) and even that’s still
heavily concerned with issues relating to life in the city.

The People
Here in 106 pages, Second City lays out the major characters, their
personalities, goals, issues, and plots. Four chapters showcase a cross-section
of the populace: The Ivory Court (7-16), Movers and Shakers (19-35), People of
the Second City- broken down by clan- (37-85), and finally Common People
(87-96). There are some great ideas here- and characters worth lifting for
other campaigns. There’s some interesting discussion about how to adapt the
Second City’s Court structure to other settings. I would have liked to have
seen some Challenge, Focus, Strike ideas here. That would have aided
potential GMs. The book wraps up with eight pages of new mechanics- mostly new
alternate paths and a new Ivory Kingdoms-derived basic path.

The Campaign
This book offers a massive and extended story which draws the party from
Rokugan to the colonies and Second City. This takes up nearly all of the book’s
106 pages. It presents a fairly linear plot- though with some room for changes
and maneuvering. It does stop off to present some plot options- but I found
myself thinking several times that I’d have to rework or handle things
differently based on my group’s usual play. The opening, in particular, may
take some tweaking depending on the group. Still, there’s a decently cool and
ambitious story here which reminds me of the scope and scale of Tomb of
Iuchiban, perhaps even more sweeping. The book ends with several pages of
bestiary for the Ivory Kingdoms. There’s so much here I feel a little bad
asking for more, but I would have liked more general material on running an
Ivory Kingdoms campaign. GMs not using this particular campaign story will have
a good deal of development to do. I can hope that we might see more IK campaign
ideas or material in the future. A smaller POD supplement could be hugely
useful- like paid DLC for those who spent the money on this set.

Journals
Two digest-sized journals included harken back to older L5R box sets. One is a
pillow book of an Ide offering a decent overview of life in the new colony. The
second offers a prop for use with the campaign. It is nice to see these kinds
of materials again.

The Map
The large poster map of the city is just that- an unlabeled, top down view of
the whole of the Second City. There are hundreds of tiny buildings, most
identical and clearly cut and pasted. I’ve had preferred a more impressionistic
approach to the map- this is so literal and specific that it feels out of
place. On top of that, there’s real pixilation to the buildings on the map-
clearly done at a smaller scale and then blown up to this size. It is a pretty
picture, but not that useful. A smaller map would have worked just as well or
better.

But here’s the thing which really bugs me. There’s absolutely no map of the
Ivory Kingdoms anywhere in the set. I understand that the region hasn’t been
mapped- but there’s nothing. Not a rough approximation offering an idea of
size, of relative positions of sites, of the regions described in the text, or
even what’s near the city. There’s no rough map perhaps showing what the path
from Rokugan to the Ivory Kingdoms looks like. I understand that Rokugani maps
are inaccurate and crazy, I take that as a given. But I’d like some idea of
general positions- perhaps a kind of old Medieval “Here There Be Monsters”
legendary map which is more drawing that chart. It seems like a massive oversight
on the part of the designers and continually frustrated me when I went through
the book. The material does seem aimed at offering a city campaign in another
locale- hence the emphasis on urban populace and locations. But players are
going to want to go outside of there and I’d like a little help with that. I
imagine some of the argument goes that they don’t want to tie the GM’s hands-
but the text already lays out some specifics, so the roughest of maps won’t
hurt that.

OVERALL
I’m glad I own Second City- it is a lovely and amazing box, full of game
stuff. However, I’m also a little disappointed. The material seems so focused
on the urban story and the campaign arc that it doesn’t offer more of the
resources which would make this a viable campaign setting for a GM. Beyond the
issue of the absent map, the set really needs more material about the colonies
as a whole. The kinds of players interested in exploring this setting will want
to see that. It isn’t completely absent from the books, but it feels thin
against the abundance of other riches. This is also a module which embraces a
late timeline, something I’m less interested in. I need to think how I might
bridge that gap. Should I borrow ideas and bring them to the mainland- or can I
start something like the Destroyer war in my current campaign?

I think the biggest question is this: do you want to run Legend of the Five
Rings without Rokugan? It isn’t completely gone- many of the key structures
exist here. But it does cut away some essential elements of the classic game. I
don’t think Second City would work as well for players new to the
setting- in some ways SC only becomes really distinct and exotic in contrast to
the original setting. That means that Second City works best for those
players and groups who have grown tired or bored of Rokugan. For them this is a
dynamite and hugely useful product. On the other hand, for me- I’m not tired of
the Emerald Empire yet. There’s interesting ideas in Second City for me,
but less than I’d hoped for.